How to Use The Pirate Bay in Blocked Countries

If you’re reading this, chances are, you’re frustrated after realizing that the Pirate Bay is not working as you expected. Employers and schools often block the Pirate Bay when we least expect them to. The list of countries that have blocked this torrent site keeps on growing with those bans rising sharply as well. To give an idea, 1000 copyright violation lawsuits have been filed against the torrents site in the US alone.

The Pirate Bay needs no introduction. It is one of the best and well known torrenting sites. People visit the website for all kinds of things: mainly for downloading movies, TV series, games and so on. It is available in thirty-five different language so you can imagine its audience base. Also, it has an easy-to-use interface which is one of the reason why people prefer to use over others.

It is no stranger when it comes to facing bans and blocks by legal authorities. In the past years, many countries including India have put restrictions while new restrictions enacted in previously open countries like Romania and Greece have highlighted how hard it is to access the site.

But the good news is that you can still bypass these restrictions by the government or your local authorities by using multiple ways. In fact, Pirate Bay itself strongly recommends using a VPN every time you torrent for security, privacy, and legal reasons.

Note: Anything that is mentioned in the article is for educational purpose only. If you get caught doing something that is illegal according to your local laws then only you are responsible for it.

Why The Pirate Bay is Blocked in Your Country?

Torrenting is legal in almost every country but downloading and sharing copyright material without permission is not. However, torrenting remains a primary source in the distribution of these files. Since these P2P sites can be used for legal and illegal file sharing, countries have different policies towards The Pirate Bay. Some countries enact bans but don’t enforce them while some restrict it aggressively.

Also, using a torrent site exposes you and anyone can view your IP addresses and thus can know your location. So many countries have block torrent site to protect their citizens from becoming a victim of cyber crimes.

Currently, the laws regarding copyright have become stricter globally which is why torrenters face harsh penalties in many countries. Downloading a single unauthorized copyrighted file in some countries could result in a heavy fine. As a reminder, we do not condone illegal file sharing and should be avoided as it causes heavy losses to the owner. However, we support freedom of choice and believe bans should not be put on torrenting sites.

Where The Pirate Bay is Banned?

As of now, The Pirate Bay restrictions are enforced in more than 20 countries worldwide which include Australia, China, Belgium, France, German, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, US, UK, and the recent members Romania and Greece. The site is also effectively blocked in many small countries with no special laws since these countries share a common network with the above-mentioned countries. So, the block actually extends farther than it looks.

In a completely opposite view, there are also countries that give unrestricted access to The Pirate Bay. These countries include Switzerland, Mexico, Brazil, Belarus, Hong, Kong and more.

Ways to access The Pirate Bay in Banned Countries

Before trying to unblock this site, we must first find out if the website is down for everyone or if it’s your organization’s internet filter playing malice. Here are 8 ways on how you could bypass your workplace’s internet filter and access torrent sites including The Pirate Bay.

1. Give it Some Time

The funny thing about internet firewalls is that they often unblock websites on their own. We cannot accurately predict how long it will take for your current filter to unblock this site as it depends on the type of firewall you are using. Give it a few more days. Filters sometimes block the Pirate Bay unexpectedly and this block is removed automatically after sometime. Try accessing it after a few days.

2. Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Using a VPN is the most practical way to access blocked websites in your country. VPNs essentially reroute your traffic through another country server which is why it will show another IP address. There are plenty of VPNs to choose from, but our recommendation is NordVPN because of its combination of speed and privacy.

When trying to access Pirate Bay through a VPN, you have to select a country where the government has not banned the site. VPN also protects your devices from hacking, malware and other DoS attacks. When you chose a VPN, you should make sure that the VPN service does not collect user data or store activity logs. Some have advanced features like military-grade encryption, leak protection and a kill switch to stop data transmission if VPN connection drops.

3. Try Accessing this Website Through a Proxy

When using a proxy, your internet traffic is routed through someone else’s computer. In layman’s term, you are essentially live streaming a working version of the Pirate Bay from an unblocked computer. This way, the firewall doesn’t know what websites you are accessing, and so it’s unable to block the Pirate Bay. We have seen most internet blogger restricting access to the Pirate Bay by blocking its IP ranges.

There is also a WordPress plugin available online which lets you make your own proxy. You can use it to access any website you want as it works for all torrent websites. This method will work everytime since the plugin runs though WordPress and government is not blocking WordPress anytime soon.

When using proxies, you are given a new IP thereby facilitating access to the Pirate Bay. A quick Google search on free public proxies and you will be up and running in no time. Unsuccessful? Then it’s time for tip number 4.

4. Restarting your Modem

This is a game of luck. There are two types of IP addresses; dynamic ones and static ones. This method will only work if you have a Dynamic IP address assigned by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). When an internet service provider gives you a dynamic IP, you get a new IP address every time restart your modem. Try your luck. You may get a new IP address that is not blacklisted by the firewall.

5. Use Google Cache to Access Archived Pages of The Pirate Bay

Search engines such as Google store older versions of websites in their servers. This is definitely the easiest way of unblocking the Pirate Bay. Archived pages of the Pirate Bay are retrieved from Google servers and not from the Pirate Bay server. This means that they will not trigger filters that block access to torrenting sites such as this one. How do you do this? Input cache:thepiratebay.org into your browser’s search bar. Internet filters are clever but they will never see this one coming. According to them, you are just browsing Google while in actual sense you are accessing a website that they have blocked.

6. Get The Pirate Bay’s Pages Delivered to You by Mail

This is an ingenious trick. Has it ever crossed your mind that you could have pages of the internet delivered to you by mail? There are a few good services that take a screenshot of torrenting sites and then send them to you by mail. University students have been using this trick to download pirated movies since time immemorial. Unless they have blocked email access, you will be browsing The Pirate Bay in under 5 minutes. Do your own research and find websites that send web pages as emails. We won’t be making public recommendations today.

7. View a PDF of the Pirate Bay Instead

Thanks to services such as PDFmyURL, you can access the Pirate Bay by browsing a PDF version of it. Visit this site and enter the blocked website that you want to access. They have even created a chrome extension that lets you access the Pirate Bay as a PDF in a matter of minutes.

8. Utilize Google Translate

We all know that his tool lets you translate foreign languages into ones that you understand. But did you know that you could use it to access blocked websites? Prepare to be amazed. Visit Google translate and enter thepiratebay.org in the address bar. Choose translate from English into any other language you prefer. (We will be looking at the English version of the site so it won’t matter what language it will be translated to). The downside to this hack is that it sometimes distorts the layout but, isn’t this better than nothing?

Conclusion

Some are easy, while some needs a little bit of technical knowledge. Bottom line is, all of these methods are legal and secure. Use these methods wisely to unblock the site and access your content. Make sure to leave a comment below on which method you liked the most and why.

Mehul Boricha is the founder of Tech Arrival & Astute Links. He is a computer and smartphone geek from Junagadh, Gujarat, India. He is a Computer Engineer by Education & an Entrepreneur by Passion. Apart from technology geek, he is an audiophile & loves to connect with people.